Lust. Geoff Ryman
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copy pulled open the drawer. His face fell. His chin dropped and looked temporarily double. He turned his whole body as if his back was stiff, his chin still resting on his chest.
‘Yes. Well,’ the copy whispered. ‘I’m not real, am I?’ He did not manage to smile. He closed the drawer slowly, delicately with the tip of his finger. He stared at the drawer. ‘I can’t change anything.’
He looked back at Michael, and tried to smile. ‘I can’t write anything. When I go, so will all the marks on the page. I could do all your annual accounts and in the morning, you’d be back where you started. I can’t father a child. I can’t make a difference to anything.’
The two Michaels stared at each other.
‘It really is a very peculiar sensation,’ said the copy and chuckled. ‘I am completely and totally impotent.’ The grin glazed. ‘Can you send me back now, please?’
Afterwards, Michael went to the security room. The guard, Shafiq, sat there in slate-blue uniform, watching EastEnders.
‘Shafiq, do you think we could look at the CCTV tapes, please?’
Shafiq was eating a Pot Noodle. His mouth stopped circulating for an instant and he froze in place. Then he swallowed and stood up.
‘Why, Michael, is something wrong, has there been an intrusion?’
‘No, no, no, Shafiq, nothing’s wrong. I just want to check on something.’
Shafiq was upset. ‘I have been here all the time, Michael. Watching, really.’ The television was still talking, and his eyes listed guiltily towards it. ‘I watch the television, you know, but I always keep one eye on the CCTV, too.’
‘I know, Shafiq, you do an excellent job. I just want to check.’
In a more normal state, Michael would have been stricken with concern: Shafiq was a good man, a good father, who was proud of his work. Shafiq seemed to drop to his knees in prayer and began to open up the banks of secure tapes.
‘What rooms do you think suffered? When?’
‘About two hours ago. Let’s try my office.’
‘Your office.’ Michael could hear the bottom drop out of Shafiq’s stomach. ‘With all your records, and papers!’
He really does care, thought Michael. Why does he care? What have I given him that he should give a tinker’s?
Shafiq inserted the cassette and nervously punched rewind.
‘But Ebru and everyone were here two hours ago. Michael, they would have heard something too.’
It wasn’t fair to scare Shafiq like this. But looking at the security tapes would confirm something.
‘There it is, sir.’
Michael’s office. And there was Michael, turned around in his chair and plainly talking to empty air.
‘Thank you, Shafiq, you can turn it off now.’
‘Don’t you want to wait until you leave the office?’ Shafiq was beginning to look baffled. ‘How would there be an intruder, if you were there all along?’
‘It’s not an intruder, OK? Please Shafiq, don’t be too concerned. Do you think you can show me the cold store interior at 5.03?’
Shafiq was going from baffled to slightly annoyed. ‘What are we looking for, Michael? Perhaps I could suggest something else. The CCTV looks at all the doors and even the ventilation shafts.’
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Shafiq, but please show me.’
The cold room looked grey and indistinct and empty. It was hard to see; for a moment Michael thought he saw something move, as if through fog. He peered, but was finally sure beyond doubt. There was no one there.
The security video jumped between frames taken one second apart. Suddenly, the door was half-open. Suddenly it was wide open. Suddenly Michael himself stepped in in stages, lurching like Frankenstein’s monster. He stayed alone and chatting to no one.
‘OK, Shafiq. False alarm.’
Shafiq stood up straight and adjusted his blue shirt. ‘But if there has been anything moved, surely it would be better to study tapes when you weren’t there.’
Michael closed his eyes, to avoid Shafiq’s face, and his voice was unnaturally quiet and precise. ‘I was mistaken, Shafiq. I don’t want to worry you further. Thank you for helping.’
He walked out of the room, his back held straight.
In the corridor he thought, I’m alone. I’m really alone.
Maybe I am just crazy.
But even if I’m not, they aren’t real. My Angel said that. They are the universe breaking its own rules. If unreal people walked free to change the world, it would be a catastrophe. And so they come and work and love and when they leave, they leave no evidence or trace behind.
They can’t sort slides; they can’t be video taped.
The only evidence, the only scars, will be in my memory. I am the only thing they can change. Otherwise, poor Angels, when they go it is as if they never existed.
Michael felt sad for them. Because I know that when they are here, they love and feel and want. When they’re here, they’re alive.
Michael sat at his desk and looked at the brick wall again, and heard his own voice rage, demanding, ‘Why is the design of this experiment such crap!’
What is a sample of one going to tell you, God? Why bend all the rules of the universe just to do this terrible thing to me? Is it a joke, God? Does it amuse you to see people knocked sideways, their whole life go rotten like an apple? Do you like to see us hauled beyond our limits? Do you like to see us cry?
And why do this to an impotent man? What is it going to teach me, what are you going to learn from this except what we both know? I’m lousy in bed. What’s the big deal about that, I live with it, I’ve learned to live with it.
Michael went back to the cold room. In a rage, sweating in the chill, he tore through the work. The glass edges of the slides cut his fingers.
It took an hour. When he was done he had a sudden moment of irrational fear that his own work would also disappear. He closed the drawer and opened it again, to check. The work remained.
So maybe I do just make them up, maybe I make up that other people see and hear them. Maybe I am just nuts.
Michael arrived back at the flat late, exhausted, chilled and sweaty. He must have looked a state. Phil glanced up at him from what looked like a plate of tomato sauce on cardboard. ‘You didn’t tell me when you would be home,’ Phil said. ‘So I went ahead with dinner.’
So when did Phil ever call to say when he’d be home? Michael sat down exhausted, shambolic. Today was a bad hair day: his scalp itched and he knew his hair tumbled down in dank, greasy curls. His five o’clock shadow had arrived on time, but now, at 8.30 PM, it was even thicker and coated with cold sweat. Phil wouldn’t look at him.
‘That’s OK, I guess,’ said Michael. ‘You probably don’t realize that I’ve been coming home on time lately. You’re never in. It was my effort to be here in case you wanted to go to a movie or anything.’
Phil’s eyes were shuttered like windows. In the silence, Michael had the opportunity to examine Phil’s newly vegetarian food. There was no table fat on his bread.
Phil asked in a light voice, ‘Where exactly is your work?’
It was a question that produced an automatic prickling sensation of suspicion, even fear. Hold on, thought Michael. This is Phil. Then he thought, hold on, this is Phil.
He stalled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh. It’s